by Dan Gutman
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In the A box, type Socorro NM.
In the B box, type Albuquerque NM.
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Pep got to work. First, she stared at the cipher to see if there were any obvious patterns. . . .
NEZVES YZTRIH TNEETEN ZINHTH GIEYTZ NEWZTYAM
She copied the letters again, this time closing them up. Spaces between words, she knew, are often put in there just to throw you off.
NEZVESYZTRIHTNEETENZINHTHGIEYTZNEWZTYAM
“See anything?” Coke whispered, looking over her shoulder.
“Not yet,” she whispered back. “NEETEN pops out, but it’s probably just some random letters that look like a word.”
She copied the cipher once again, this time writing it backward.
MAYTZWENZTYEIGHTHNIZNETEENTHIRTZYSEVZEN
“Wait a minute!” she said. “I think there are nulls in there.”
“You mean fake letters?” Coke asked.
“Yeah, probably Z.”
She crossed out all the Zs, and this is what was left . . .
MAYTWENTYEIGHTHNINETEENTHIRTYSEVEN
“That’s it!” Coke said, a little too loud. “You’re a genius! Add the spaces!”
She didn’t have to. It was obvious now.
MAY TWENTY EIGHTH NINETEEN THIRTY SEVEN
“May 28, 1937!” Pep said.
“What do you think that could mean?” Coke asked his sister.
“How should I know?” Pep replied. “You’re the one who remembers everything. Something important must have happened on that date.”
“What are you two whispering about back there?” asked Mrs. McDonald.
“Yeah,” said their dad. “What mischief are you up to?”
“Oh, we’re just playing a word game,” Coke told his parents.
“Sounds like fun,” said Mrs. McDonald. “Can we play, too?”
“No!” said both twins.
The twins looked at each other. They knew they would have to wait a few minutes after being snotty before they could ask a favor of their parents. It was sort of like waiting an hour after you eat before going swimming. Finally, they determined that enough time had passed.
“Hey, you guys are old,” Coke called up to the front seat. “What does the date May 28, 1937, mean to you?”
“I’m not that old,” said Dr. McDonald. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering,” Coke lied.
“Well, 1937 was shortly before World War Two broke out, if that helps,” said Dr. McDonald.
It didn’t. Both twins realized that this was too serious for guessing games. Dr. Warsaw was working on a nuclear bomb. From now on, Coke and Pep would have to stop relying on their parents’ knowledge to help them figure out these clues. No more fooling around. No more mistakes. Lives could be at stake.
“Google it,” Coke said to his sister.
She borrowed her mother’s laptop computer and tapped the date into the box. . . .
There were 345,000 results. Pep paged through the top choices looking for something significant. One thing kept popping up. . . .
MAY 28, 1937: VOLKSWAGEN IS FOUNDED
“That’s gotta be it!” Coke whispered. “Volkswagen was Hitler’s pet project. I saw that in a book. He wanted a car that average people in Germany could afford to buy. The word Volkswagen means ‘The People’s Car Company.’”
“But what could Volkswagen have to do with us?” Pep asked.
“We know Hitler was trying to build an atomic bomb, right?” Coke said. “Well, Dr. Warsaw is trying to build an atomic bomb, too. Maybe they’re connected. Maybe Dr. Warsaw is driving a Volkswagen. Maybe we need to go to a Volkswagen factory. Who knows?”
Up to this point, the answers to the ciphers had always led the twins to something big. It was never obvious in the beginning, but eventually, all the clues would tie together in some way.
Pep found a clean page in her notepad and wrote this at the top. . . .
CIPHER #1: MAY 28, 1937, VOLKSWAGEN IS FOUNDED
The twins had been working so hard on the cipher, they hadn’t noticed that they were suddenly driving past stores, apartments, and gas stations. They weren’t in the desert anymore. Coke looked out the window to see the Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower, the tallest building in New Mexico. It was nice to be in a big city again. Back in civilization.
“So what does the guidebook say about Albuquerque?” Dr. McDonald asked his wife.
“Let’s see,” she said. “Do you guys want to go to the Turquoise Museum?”
“They have a museum devoted to a color?” Pep asked.
“Not a color, you dope,” her brother said. “Turquoise is a mineral.”
“Don’t call your sister a dope,” warned Dr. McDonald.
“We already went to the Bauxite Museum,” Coke recalled. “I don’t want to look at more rocks.”
“There’s the Meteorite Museum . . .”
“No!”
“How about the International Balloon Museum?” suggested Mrs. McDonald. “Maybe we could take a ride in a hot air balloon.”
“I don’t like heights,” Pep said. “Is there a Volkswagen museum in Albuquerque?”
“No, but there’s the American International Rattlesnake Museum.”
“Cool!” Pep said. “Let’s go there! We learned all about snakes in Girl Scouts. I even got to hold one.”
“I don’t like snakes,” Coke said.
“Come on,” his sister urged him. “Don’t be such a baby.”
Now reader, I know what you’re thinking—somehow, the twins will find themselves confronted by poisonous rattlesnakes. But as I promised in the last chapter, that’s not going to happen. So relax. Nothing to worry about.
“Hey, guess what!” Mrs. McDonald said. “The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History is right here in Albuquerque. Ben, we could gather some information for that novel you’re planning to write about the Trinity Site.”
“Bo-ring!”
Dr. McDonald pulled over to the curb, stopped the car, and turned around to face the twins. They braced for a stern lecture. But their father didn’t look angry.
“Look,” he said, “you kids are thirteen now. You’ve matured a lot on this trip. I can see it. You don’t have to be with Mommy and Daddy all the time. Your mother and I are going to the Nuclear Science and History Museum. You can come with us, or you can go to the Rattlesnake Museum, or do whatever you want. It’s up to you. But I don’t want to hear any whining in the backseat.”
Coke and Pep looked at each other, communicating silently, as only twins can.
“We’ll go to the Rattlesnake Museum,” Pep said.
Their parents gave them some money and dropped them off on San Felipe Street, right near the main square in the Old Town section of Albuquerque.
The sign on the little adobe building read RATTLESNAKE MUSEUM AND GIFT SHOP. It’s a tiny, three-room, mom-and-pop sort of place, but it’s packed floor-to-ceiling with the largest collection of live rattlesnakes in the world. Western diamondbacks, black-tails, Mexican lance-headed rattlesnakes, you name it. There are also glass cases filled with tarantulas, scorpions, turtles, and Gila monsters.
Coke took a step back after walking in the door.
“This place is not for herpetophobes,” he said. Pep refused to give her brother the satisfaction of explaining what a herpetophobe was.
“Okay, I get it,” she said. “You don’t like snakes.”
In addition to the live specimens, the Rattlesnake Museum also has snake-related artwork, toys, games, jewelry, clothing, sculptures, videos, license plates, and posters for movies like Cobra Woman.
“Let’s check out the gift shop,” Coke said after a few minutes of watching the creepy live snakes.
He opened a door with a GIFT SHOP sign over it and held it for Pep to walk through first. It was a dark, empty room, about the size of a small bedroom.
“This can’t be right,” Pep said.
&n
bsp; When the twins turned around to go back inside the museum, the door closed with a loud click.
“Hey, this doesn’t look like a . . .”
The door was locked. There was no way out.
At that moment, an engine started up and the “room” they had walked into began to move.
“What’s happening?” Pep shouted, almost falling over.
“It’s a trap!” Coke yelled as he struggled to make his way to the wall. “We walked right into it!”
It didn’t take long to figure out they were in the back of a truck. Somebody was driving them somewhere. But they didn’t know who, and they didn’t know where.
“Let us out!” Pep screamed, banging on the walls with her fists.
The truck drove a mile or so, and then pulled off to the side of a gravel road. It backed up a few feet and stopped, and then the twins felt the floor under them was starting to tilt. One side was rising up.
“It’s some kind of a dump truck!” Pep shouted. “They’re dumping us!”
Coke tried to brace himself along the wall to avoid sliding down to the bottom. Pep did the same.
“Hold on!” Coke shouted.
The floor reached a forty-five-degree angle and stopped. Then there was a loud clunk and the end of the truck—the lower side—fell away. The twins looked down. All they could see was dirt.
“I can’t hold on any longer!” Pep shouted.
A few seconds later she let go, sliding across the floor, out of the opening, and into a pit. It was a little larger than a grave. Coke followed, nearly landing on top of his sister. Neither of them was hurt, but that was a small consolation. They were trapped. The walls of the pit were almost five feet high. There was no way to climb out.
“Well, howdy, partners.”
Coke and Pep looked up to see a man standing at the edge of the pit. He must have been driving the truck. The man was dressed like a cowboy, with the hat, boots, jeans—the works. In one hand he held a canvas sack.
“Who are you?” Pep asked breathlessly.
“Jonathan Pain’s the name. You can call me John.”
“John Wayne?” Pep asked. “Like that old movie star?”
“Not Wayne. Pain,” sneered John Pain. “Because that’s what I inflict on people. No need to remember my name. You can just call me your worst nightmare.”
Coke looked around frantically for a way out of the pit.
“Oh, don’t bother trying to leave just yet, young feller,” said John Pain. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere till I’m good and ready to let you go.”
“Why are you doing this?” Pep asked. “We never did anything to you.”
“Never said you did,” John Pain drawled. “But I got two jobs to do this week. The first one is to get some uranium for my employer. I think you may know him. Dr. Herman Warsaw?”
“So he is working on a bomb!” Coke said.
It wasn’t just some rumor. It was for real.
“What’s your other job?” asked Pep.
“Oh. To kill you.”
The twins gulped.
“And how are you going to do that?” Coke asked defiantly.
“Oh, you’ll find out. When I’m good and ready,” said John Pain. “I’m in no rush. It could be five minutes from now, or it could be tomorrow. Or it could be the next day. But you can bet that I’m going to kill you. And it’s gonna to be an awful, painful death.”
“I thought cowboys were supposed to be nice,” Pep said.
“You shouldn’t stereotype people, little lady,” John Pain said. “Some cowboys are nice. Others ain’t so nice. I would belong in the ain’t-so-nice category.”
“If Dr. Warsaw hates us so much, why doesn’t he kill us himself?” asked Coke. “Why is he always sending people like you to do the dirty work for him?”
“The good doctor is, shall we say, incapacitated,” John Pain told them. “He’s in no condition to harm anybody. But I am.”
The cowboy took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and skillfully lit it by flicking a match with one hand against the bottom of his boot.
“Cigarettes can kill you,” Pep pointed out.
“It’s true, little lady,” said John Pain. “You know what else can kill you?”
He took the canvas sack he’d been carrying and tossed it into the pit.
“Snakes.”
Chapter 13
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS
Well, that just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you read in a book. Especially this book.
You are so gullible!
It’s time you learned that people who write fiction are a bunch of liars. In fact, lying is their job. If one of them tells you there isn’t going to be a snake attack in a story, you can pretty much bet there’s going to be a snake attack in that story.
Of course there was going to be a snake attack! How could there not be a snake attack? Didn’t they teach you about foreshadowing in school? There was no reason to have Coke and Pep see a sign warning them about snakes if there wasn’t going to be a snake attack later on.
The canvas sack that John Pain tossed into the pit began to slither toward the twins.
“Snakes!” Coke yelled, backing against the dirt wall. “Why did it have to be snakes?”
After wriggling around for a few seconds, a brownish head popped out of the sack’s opening. The snake seemed to have enlarged scales at the top of its head and a light stripe behind the corner of its mouth. It opened that mouth ridiculously wide and flicked a forked tongue out. Two sharp fangs were visible. Pep gasped.
“I’d like you to meet Herman,” said John Pain. “He’s a Mojave rattlesnake. I named him after my good friend Dr. Herman Warsaw.”
Herman slithered all the way out of the canvas sack and began to explore the pit. He was about three feet long, with a greenish-brown diamond pattern along his back. Coke and Pep jumped to get out of his way.
“Did you know that seven thousand people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States each year?” asked John Pain.
“Venomous?” asked Coke. He was sweating profusely.
“Oh yeah,” said John Pain. “The Mojave rattlesnake is the most potently venomous snake in the United States.”
“Great.”
Herman slithered to the other end of the pit. The twins jumped over him to get as far away as possible.
“Help!” Pep screamed uselessly. “Somebody help!”
“Herman’s lookin’ for food, I reckon,” John Payne said, ignoring her. “You might wanna keep still. His vision ain’t so hot, but he’s really good at perceivin’ movement.”
“You’re crazy!” Coke yelled.
“Herman also has a keen sense of smell, and a set of heat-sensin’ pits in his face that help ’im locate prey,” John Pain said casually. “He’s got such a big appetite, he only eats once every two weeks.”
“When did he eat last?” Pep asked.
“’Bout two weeks ago, I reckon.”
“Help!” Pep screamed again. “Somebody help!”
The twins cowered in the corner while Herman explored the other end of the pit.
“He’s lyin’ in wait, y’see,” said John Pain. “When he finds somethin’ that looks tasty, like you, he’ll shake his rattle as a warning, and then pounce. Grab you with them fangs of his. That’s how he injects his hemotoxic venom. It’ll travel through your bloodstream—”
“Shut up!” Coke hollered. “Why do you lunatics always have to explain how you’re going to kill people?”
“’Cause that’s half the fun, son,” John Pain said. “After Herman bites ya, you’ll feel a tinglin’ sensation at first, and you’ll start in sweatin’. As the venom destroys yer body tissue, you’ll feel weakness and nausea. You may throw up. There’ll be swellin’, internal bleedin’, and intense pain. I love pain. You know what they say—no pain, no gain.”
“We gotta get out of here,” Coke muttered.
“A few minutes after he bites you, you’ll have paralysis and
heart failure,” John Pain said. “By then, of course, you’re a goner.”
Herman turned around. It looked like he was eyeing the twins.
“Coke, do something!” Pep yelled.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know!” Pep shouted. “Didn’t you take karate for five years?”
“Are you crazy? Karate moves on a snake?”
Herman was on the move again, slithering back and forth.
“After its prey is dead,” John Pain continued, “the Mojave rattlesnake eats the head first. It’ll even digest the bones. Amazin’ creature, when you think about it.”
Herman hissed and made a rattle sound with his tail.
“He’s about to strike!” Pep screamed.
“Tell you what,” John Pain said. “If you two can figure a way outta this mess, I’ll let you go. How’s that for fair?”
“Quick!” Pep yelled to her brother. “Do you have anything in your pockets? Maybe we can stab him with something.”
Coke searched his pockets. The only thing he came up with was the package of freeze-dried ice cream from the Very Large Array Visitor Center. Frantically, he ripped the package open and sprinkled the contents on the ground around Herman.
Herman didn’t seem interested.
“Snakes like to eat livin’ things, pardner,” John Pain said, amused. “Like birds and mice and lizards. They don’t eat freeze-dried ice cream.”
Herman made the rattling sound again.
“I’m going to have to kill it with my bare hands!” Coke said.
“That’s a knee-slapper!” John Pain said, doubled over laughing.
“Kill it?” said Pep. “I’m against cruelty to animals. I did a report in school—”
“It’s him or us!” Coke shouted. “Somebody’s gonna die here!”
Herman moved toward the twins.
“I think he likes you,” John Pain said.
“Take your shirt off!” Pep yelled at her brother.
“What? And do what with it?”
“I have an idea,” Pep said, grabbing the canvas sack from the ground behind Herman. “Just give me your shirt!”
Coke pulled his shirt over his head and handed it to his sister. She put it around her neck. Then she held up the canvas bag, with the opening facing Herman.
